Bob Vander Meer, Mentor

Sealing the ampoules - the small glass vessels that contain a rubber septum saturated with either hexane alone (the control), or hexane plus the contents of the poison sac. These ampoules are used as individual storage devices for the rubber septa, which serve as surrogate queens during lab experiments.

Archna Eniasivam studied laboratory colonies of the red imported fire ant. Among her duties were locating the queen, extracting the poison sack, and testing the attractiveness of various components of the poison sac to worker ants during controlled experiments.

Conducting the surrogate queen bioassay.